I'm only singling Christian Science out because it's the most well known, this is to be a topic of religion and science just in general.

Can religion be mixed with science at all? When religion (or those who believe in it) already have all the answers, the natural consequence of this, will be using science for the sole purpose of verifying their already established beliefs. Obviously this isn't the most progressive form of science known to man, but is it not a contradiction in general? We all know that science is a forever changing art, what we knew yesterday could be the opposite tomorrow, why stop when we've just justified that which has been known to us already through the revelation of God?

SicN Twisted

03-24-2005, 01:16 PM

It's a complete contradiction - Christian science has absolutely nothing to do with science, it's quite the opposite actually. To believe that no humans should make any attempt to understand or cure illness and leave it to god is a flat out rejection of science. I have more contempt for sects like this then I do Christianity in general, cause these loonies are letting their loved ones die because of misguided faith.

Mota Boy

03-24-2005, 01:37 PM

My personal opinion is that religion is an ancient combination of science and philosophy, both of which eventually branched off into their own fields. Christian science is not legitimate science, because it will never allow itself to reach a conclusion contradictory to any pre-determined belief. It's a farce.

Faust

03-24-2005, 01:50 PM

no they can`t be mixed as far as I`m concerned.
religion is a matter of faith and science is a matter of logic.
faith isn`t logical, it`s irrational. science is trying to find answers and truths, but like Kant said, it`s metaphysical nonsense to even try to prove god`s existence or the opposite.

yet, some things can be tried to prove scientifically, like for example some events or persons in the bible. I`m sure that Christianity was originally just a philosophical way of life (like Taoism) that unfortunately turned from a philosophy into a religion.

wheelchairman

03-24-2005, 02:07 PM

Christianity started as a progressive ministry of Jesus Christ, who was deeply inspired by the Jewish theologist Hillel.

Faust

03-24-2005, 02:27 PM

it`s funny how they say that not everything that is written on a paper is necessarily true nowadays when in fact it has always been that way.
all the miraclous things that this guy called Jesus did and everything else that is essential in Christianity, like for instance Moses and he`s life, are the kind of "knowledge" that has gone through centuries in the form of "story-telling" and then some persons wrote the story down. ever since it has been regarded as a truth.. "because it`s written down in a holy book..it has to be true."
People are easy to mislead.

The Talking Pie

03-25-2005, 03:07 PM

Religion is created by man. To take a step back to the root, we have faith. And if you use science as a means to prove your faith, it stops being faith.

Quoth the dictionary:

Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

JoY

03-25-2005, 03:28 PM

religion has answered questions science couldn't answer. these days science is able to answer a lot more questions than 2000 years ago, though. science is slowly replacing faith. we shouldn't ignore the possibility, though, that it's well possible, that there's more out there. I think.

JoY

03-25-2005, 03:29 PM

Religion is created by man.
that's as unproved, as faith & religion itself.

The Talking Pie

03-25-2005, 03:39 PM

Faith is spiritual, religion is created by man to capitalise on it. Jesus didn't say "create a church, hierarchy and traditions". Man takes the idea of faith and spirituality and turns it into a system, which we call religion.

JoY

03-25-2005, 03:40 PM

alright, I'm very willing to agree with that.

nitropenguin!

03-25-2005, 03:52 PM

Faith is definitely spiritual. I do think religion has been manufactured. I've been brought to feel that man created religion; stories and beliefs to look up at, so they know there's something to fall back on when there's nothing else. It somewhat supports them mentally. It's hard to convince yourself that there's hard evidence concerning religion. Scientific evidence is most often distinct and accurate.

I'm making sense, right? =P

dirtybird

03-25-2005, 07:32 PM

It depends on what you are talking about. With the whole creation debate, it is impossible to side with both, because they 'order' of creation is different in each. For other topics, however, you may be able to find a correlation.

Jesus

03-26-2005, 03:32 AM

I'm only singling Christian Science out because it's the most well known, this is to be a topic of religion and science just in general.

Can religion be mixed with science at all? When religion (or those who believe in it) already have all the answers, the natural consequence of this, will be using science for the sole purpose of verifying their already established beliefs.

Bah, it all depends on what you consider "a religious person" is and I don't mean dictionary definitions.

I have no problem with "people with faith" doing science, hell they even contributed a lot to science throughout history like for instance monks.
Most "persons with faith" never claim to have all the answers either, sure bigots do, but they'd still be bigots even if they weren't religious or didn't have faith at all. It's pretty naive to believe that they would stop being bigots if they weren't religious. Cause that would only be true if religion was the cause, which is quite an assumption and still wouldn't explain the atheist bigots like me...

I'm more worried about verifying what needs to be true for financers than the role of religion in science.